The development of new and complex apparatus and processes and their use at remote or unattended locations pose unique problems to owners of deposit and pick-up systems. An owner must have the capability of monitoring the deposit and pick-up systems from remote locations as well as being able to receive instructions and to provide billings, security and 24-hour service. Dry cleaning and laundry operators who attempt to provide pick-up and delivery services are confined to specific scheduling and provide such services only when the customer can be present to conduct the transaction. Even after a schedule has been arranged, unforeseen circumstances can occur which cause the customer not to be present or the route driver to be delayed in arriving for pick-up or delivery. These problems resulting in unsuccessful pick-up or delivery attempts and the inconvenience to the customer pose serious problems to the industry.
Attempts have been made to provide apparatus for use with processing establishments such as laundries and dry cleaners which work in conjunction with collection and distribution centers whereby customers deposit articles to be processed at a time when the processing establishment or collection and distribution center is closed and no attendant is present. In these previous attempts to overcome establishment scheduling, the customer would place clothing in a laundry bag and leave the laundry bag in a predetermined unattended outdoor location or a drop chute attached to the establishment for the business operator pickup. This method has resulted in disputes between the business operator and the customer over the quantity and quality of clothing left in the laundry bag. Problems also continued regarding scheduling of deliveries of the clean clothing to the customers.
In addition to the problems of security and conflict between the customer and the operator regarding quality and quantity of laundry items contained in a specific delivered bag, billing and laundry instructions items have been traditionally handwritten. However, writing tickets by hand by the operator creates an environment for error because of memory lapses as to established base prices and up charges for various items and process instructions or errors in operator judgment as to item characteristics relevant to service prices. In a busy establishment, the pressure of time may promote even more errors. Depending upon the nature of the error, the customer or the operator may be dissatisfied with the frequency of errors where they are found in the services provided, information provided, and/or billing.
In addition to the laundry and dry cleaning industry, other industries require automatic item-driven systems for deposit and pick-up services in a job-driven environment. Remote vending services, library services, inventory control systems for automatic dispensing, and item rental services all share the need for automated information and inventory controlled systems.
The incorporation of computers in a point-of-sale terminal has been found to provide, for example, the mathematical functions for calculation of the total item prices or item service prices, taxes and informational bases regarding customer and services provided. The computerized point-of-sale terminals, while providing numerous advantages over handwritten tickets, does not remedy all of the problems associated with handwritten tickets and, of course, does not address unattended automatic deposit machines and the new additional issues raised by public use of such machines. In the dry cleaning and laundry industries, as in many other businesses, it is desirable to be able to account for all outstanding identification tickets and billings. As each ticket is returned, the returned ticket 1 5 must be reconciled against the record of outstanding tickets; however, frequently the consumer has forgotten to bring the ticket thus necessitating a human operator to manually audit and locate the laundry items.
To facilitate the accounting of outstanding tickets, the industry has in some cases turned to bar codes utilized on the tickets so that the bar codes can be scanned by an operator when tickets are presented. Each ticket bears a different bar code, either preprinted on the ticket form or manufactured at the time the ticket is issued. Reading of a ticket bar code at the time of incoming order and again at the time the outgoing items are returned to the customer permits enhancement of the normal functions of the point-of-sale terminal. However these operations have been utilized only at point-of-sale terminals, not successfully at remote location terminals, unmanned terminals or automatic deposit machine locations.
New and complex apparatus and processes have been developed for various industry uses, for example: devices and methodology for automatically invoicing and crediting the user of a system such as a medical diagnostic and therapeutic apparatus from a location remote from the system is found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,258,906 entitled "System For Remotely Authorizing operation Of A Device and For Automatically Generating An Invoice Based On Device Usage". Automatic vending machines having a bar code reader and bar coded columns and switches are presented in U.S. Pat. No. 5,272,321. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,140, apparatus is provided for receiving articles, storing the articles after processing and subsequently reissuing the articles. In yet another patent, U.S. Pat. No. 5,313,393, a system is provided for inventorying dispensed and deposited garments; the clean new or soiled garment is accessible to a user upon the user inserting a proper ID card and the card being validated.
A difficulty in operating these various deposit and dispensing operations whether sale of goods, rental of goods or services such as laundry or dry cleaning has been the need to be available 24 hours a day in multiple locations which better serve the public. Users of these services often wish to deposit and pick-up rental, dry cleaning or laundry items outside normal working hours and at a location which is more convenient to either the workplace or home. There remains a clear demand for an automated deposit and issuing machine system which also allows for pick-up and dispensing. However, despite this obvious need it is believed that no suitable machine or system is available which serves the public and yet provides security, access, information transmission, billing, payment and all other functions demanded and required by the user while still being user friendly. Of course, with service items, rental items, and special use items, it does not suffice to just dispense; it is important to require knowledge of the whereabouts of each item which has been dispensed for rental such as video cassettes or deposited for services such as laundry, dry cleaning and/or specific use of special equipment.
With the ever increasing demand on husband and wife working teams, it has become desirable to make video cassette rentals, library book usage, laundry and dry cleaning services easily available to the working public in readily accessible areas. At the present time, rental items, video cassette rentals, laundry and dry cleaning services are through established stores which maintain libraries, videos, laundry and dry cleaning equipment, thus requiring the leasing of considerable building space together with employment of personnel to manage the daily business affairs of these industries. More importantly, these businesses generally have established hours and are not open 24 hours a day. In addition, these stores are not always conveniently located or located within a convenient distance for the customer. To eliminate lease costs as well as personnel costs, it has been suggested that an alternative method of renting and acquiring services of items is by means of dispensing machines, especially dispensing machines for cash, videos and smaller items. The advantages of such machines are that they can be placed in areas of large public access such as shopping malls or apartment buildings and they do not require large floor space or attending personnel. These conveniences for the consuming public have not been provided, especially in the area of item services required by the public such as laundry and dry cleaning. Of particular importance with respect to the laundry and dry cleaning as well as video cassette rental and other dispensing and receiving systems, operations and reliability of the internal mechanisms as well as security and user friendliness of the system as a whole are needed. In this respect, it is important that such mechanisms or systems be completely reliable and provide depositories secure from vandals and the like since items such as video cassettes and garments to be dry cleaned or laundered can run into the hundreds even thousands of dollars per depository.
Suggestions to automate a previously manually operated rental, sales, or item service operation and systems to implement those suggestions have been found in various references addressing, for example, automated handling systems for coded bank deposit boxes and dispensing cash, automated machines for renting out car keys for rental cars, automated bowling shoe rental machines, and specific use items rental dispensing return and auditing. In each of these prior taught systems, problems continue regarding services, return and control features of the automated handling systems. These prior taught systems have not been applied commercially in noticeable numbers because of the various problems encountered by operators and customers attempting to use remote automatic dispensing and return systems. In the case of laundry and dry cleaning services, keys for customer access, security of the system, information, recordation of information and item inventory control are paramount and have not previously been provided.
The present Invention overcomes these and other problems and provides an automatic deposit and issuing machine for deposit of laundry and dry cleaning, required service information, special treatment of the laundry and dry cleaning followed by appropriate control and billing as well as payment, all through a remote automated system which has a logic that is an item-driven system and can also include personal identification logic systems. The automated deposit and issuing machine includes a compact, reliable deposit acceptance mechanism, storage mechanism which transfers bagged or bundled articles to be stored for laundry operator pick-up from the remote locations and a second storage system and dispensing system for processed laundry items for consumer pick-up at the automated deposit and issuing machine. In this respect, the present Invention provides a machine which serves as an interface between the customers and the required and requested process. The requested process could be as simple as storage but in this discussion is generally addressed as a laundry and dry cleaning remote automatic deposit and issuing machine. The automatic deposit and issuing machine can be used to make transactions such as prepayment for services to be received or items purchased. All of these possible uses show the broad use of the automatic deposit and issuing machine which can also serve the function of dispensing processed items, the machine having a storage arrangement and transfer arrangement which permits the storage of a large number of processed items within and which immediately dispenses such items upon proper access being exhibited by the customer.
Accordingly, several objects and benefits of the Invention presented in this disclosure are: (1) the business operator can efficiently provide a drop-off, pick-up and delivery service at remote locations where it is not necessary for the operator to be present to conduct transactions; (2) the business operator can provide the user of an automatic item-driven system for deposit and pick-up in a job-driven environment options including access, communication, conferring, instructions, security, storage, tracking, billing, payment and delivery; (3) the business operator provides automatic vending and dispensing at the operator's business or at a remote location unattended; (4) the present Invention also provides automatic systems which interface between job-driven environment services and the user; (5) the Invention can provide the operator with process and job planning information such as treatment of articles; and (6) work in process control that includes tracking, routing, processing, receiving, inventory control and distribution of articles. Accordingly, a need clearly exists for an automatic item-driven system for deposit and pick-up which is remote from the business operator and does not require operator presence while yet providing for security, information exchange inclusive of instructions, billings, payment methods and inventory control.